Page 61 of A Novel Love Story

And I … Ilikedit. Imagining myself in a romance. I hadn’t even tried in years, burrowing in some main character’s love story instead.

He glanced up over his glasses at me. “Are you feeling ill again?”

“Huh?” I asked like an idiot.

“You’re just standing there, looking pale and a bit sick.”

I quickly turned away from him. “Sorry, sorry, I’m good. Lost in my head.”

“Ah. What talent.”

Yeah, that was it.Talent.A talent for daydreams. But it was a good one. I began to tell him that I was going to go pack up my things from the loft, when someone I could only guess was Frank appeared at the front door. He waved and thumbed behind him to the tow truck. Anders didn’t even look up from the computer screen as I fled.

I’m sure I wasn’t even a passing thought in his head.

I knew better than this. Besides, by tomorrow I’d just be a blurry memory of someone who came through town and stayed a few days in a story that never ended.

19

Unrequited Affliction

IT ONLY TOOK Aglance under the hood for Frank of Frank’s Auto Shop (and the infamous Frank’s Hotties) to know exactly what was wrong with Sweetpea. “How onearthhas this thing been running?”

“Duct tape and prayers,” I replied, biting my thumbnail nervously. “So is she fixable?”

He closed the hood and lifted his greenFRANK’S HOTTIESbaseball hat to scratch at his forehead in thought. He was an older man in a bright Hawaiian shirt with khaki cargo pants, though you couldn’t miss him even without the vacation print. He was a really big dude, with broad shoulders and a two-toned gray beard, the lighter strip running down the middle. In the third book, we find out that he had a stint in the WWE before he slipped a disk in his back. I mean, he didn’treallyhave a stint in the WWE, but in the fictional world of Quixotic Falls he did, and he had all the charisma of Dave Bautista, and the swagger of Dwayne Johnson,and honestly, I’d buy a thousand hot sauce bottles from him if he asked.

He mopped up the sweat on his forehead and gave a shrug. “I mean, yeah, yeah, she’ll take some finagling, for sure. But I can work with her.”

I let out a relieved breath. “So … I’ll come by later today to pick her up back up?”And leave.

“Sure, you can, but I’ll probably be heading over to Coop’s to try to salvage what I need, so you might wanna get the stuff out of your car that you want.”

I didn’t understand. “Salvage … ?”

He waved his hand at the front of my car, and paced back to his work desk at the head of the auto shop, swiping off bits of crumbs from the semi-clean piece of receipt paper underneath. “Your carburetor’s blown,” he said, testing three pens before he found one that worked, “and your girl’s so old I don’t got any spare parts lying around.”

My shoulders sagged. “Wait, I thought you said she was fixable? Is she not?”

“No, no,” he clarified, “she’ll be a quick fix once I get the parts I need to rebuild the carburetor, but the earliest I can promise is …” He scratched something down on his receipt paper, sucking on his teeth. “Wednesday?”

Wednesday?

That was two days from now. Which meant … I was here. For two more days.Two.I chewed on my thumbnail. “And you’re sure you can get it done by then?”

“Probably. In a perfect world,” he replied, a little apologetically. “I’m a one-man band, ma’am, and this is gonna take a bit of time, but I’ll have her fixed up as soon as I can.”

I was being ridiculous, and it wasn’t like anyone was expecting me at the cabin. The only person who knew I had still gone was Pru, and she was off doing Iceland with her boyfriend. Wednesday would be fine. But that meant … a couple more days with Anders, and my stomach twisted at the thought. Last night, I had kissed him knowing I’d be gone today, but now …

I wasn’t sure what I thought.

Two more days with Anders. Two more days dancing around the thought of my own love story. Two days.

Two.

“Wednesday is perfect,” I said with a fake smile. “Thank you. How much is it going to be?”

Frank tore off the receipt once he’d finished tallying up the expenses, and handed it to me. There wasn’t a total on the receipt, only the work and, at the bottom—

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